Even if President Obama succeeds in getting Republicans to agree to tax hikes on the wealthy as part of a “fiscal cliff” deal, the country’s grim budget realities will still cast a long shadow — limiting his ambitions as he begins plotting a second-term agenda.

Any agreement is likely to result in less than the $1.6 trillion in new taxes over the next decade that Obama requested in his initial offer to House Republicans, and White House aides are signaling to allies that any new money from taxes would be used almost entirely for deficit reduction — not for ambitious, new spending programs or government expansions.

I say we can pretty much blame the policies he championed the first 4 years for that, but I doubt the left wants to. Funny that these DNC tools do not mention that no matter what tax hike this asshole gets the republicans to go along with, that this all will be meaningless. First off, he isn’t cutting any spending – cuts 10 or 20 years from now don’t count – and has already proposed some $225 in additional spending. This comes at a time when government is already spending a trillion a year more than they can collect. CM’s bullshit CBO projections – I already showed how reliable that nonsense prediction that somehow government will lower that trillion dollar gap magically are by comparing the results of the 2009 predictions with reality – aside, we are looking at at least $10 trillion of new debt. These tax hikes are not even going to be a drop in the bucket. We need cuts. Big bonejarring cuts.

But the LSM isn’t at all dissuaded by the over spending problem. It’s not that Keynesian economics fails, it is that we are not taxing enough from them evil rich! So we get more nonsense about how the shit Obama did was supposed to help:

Where Obama entered office four years ago planning to seize a moment of economic crisis as an opportunity for transformational policies such as the $800 billion stimulus and his health care overhaul, he begins his second four years with few, if any, similarly expansive or costly prospects.

Actually, “poor Obama”, and us too I should add, find ourselves today at this nightmare economic junction precisely because of that money the porkulus bill funneled to donkey constituencies, in the process producing negligible, if any, economic boosing. That and the massive economic repercussions of Obamacare basically handing government control of 1/6th of our economy and our life and death decisions. I am surprised they didn’t blame Boosh. Maybe it was implied. But oh, the pain!

Instead, any new spending programs will, by necessity, be small and narrow in scope: repairs to roads and bridges, airport renovations and other infrastructure upgrades, for example, or modest grants to help blighted city neighborhoods.

Get it? MOAR SPENDINGZ! Wait a minute, too. I thought that $800 trillion was already supposed to fix those roads, bridges and airports? Guess they are indirectly admitting the money ended up in someone else’s pockets, huh? Maybe like Kruababe they feel there wasn’t enough money to line donkey pockets and fix things, so the priorities won out. We should spend more. And I am sure this time around it will actually go to do what they promised us last time! Just let Obama have the power to raise the debt ceiling at will, and all will be well.

This is really an extraordinary development. “Flabbergasting” might be a more apt word. Leave aside the recent ethics investigation over whether she used her position on the committee to help a bank her husband was involved with (which ended with her chief of staff getting reprimanded). Maxine Waters reliably delivers the craziest questions and the most bizarre speeches on that committee, and tends to demonstrate a stunning lack of grasp of the committee’s core subject matter.

The classic of the her oeuvre is, of course, the committee hearing on the financial crisis, in which eight heads of major financial institutions like Citi, State Street, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley were pretty ruthlessly grilled by members of Congress about how they had gotten the economy into the largest catastrophe since the Great Depression, and the greatest capital loss in history. Here is Maxine Waters, who uses her time to ask the following questions:

Are we talking about that Maxine Waters that used her position to enrich her husband’s companies? The Maxine Waters being investigated for corruption on a grand scale? Well, the one going through a show that is supposed to convince people she is being investigated. Holder has got her back, I bet. What’s the strategy here, I wonder? Nah, I don’t really wonder, I am betting this is done on purpose. This loon is going to help them confuse things and steal & waste more of our money. We are sooo screwed.

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Remember Maxine was the biggest fan of Franklin Raines and his tenure at Fannie Mae-there’s load of video of her rhetorically blowing him about how great a job he was doing managing the institution that nose dived us into this economic tailspin.

Her appointment is as ridiculous as having Barney Frank write major banking legislation.

Remember Maxine was the biggest fan of Franklin Raines and his tenure at Fannie Mae-there’s load of video of her rhetorically blowing him about how great a job he was doing managing the institution that nose dived us into this economic tailspin.

Bleh, hist_ed. There you go stealing my thunder and taking away my next move. Yeah, Waters is by far the most insane choice to give this position to, but who thinks that the democrats care about either sanity or morals, unless it was as a means to beat the other side into a pulp.

At this point we are fucked. The inmates are running the assylum, and they are proposing we pour gasoline over everything and light it up so we can get all warm and cozy.

CM’s bullshit CBO projections – I already showed how reliable that nonsense prediction that somehow government will lower that trillion dollar gap magically are by comparing the results of the 2009 predictions with reality – aside, we are looking at at least $10 trillion of new debt.

A 2009 prediction directly after a huge financial crisis doesn’t negate any other forecast. Which alternative forecast was more accurate? Why was it ‘nonsense’, as opposed to extremely difficult to carry out with a high chance of being wrong?
Where do you get “at least $10 trillion of new debt” – what forecast is this based on?

We need cuts. Big bonejarring cuts.

Then you better forecast a colossal recession (less govt spending, and considerably less tax revenue). If you don’t you’re ignoring ‘reality’.

A 2009 prediction directly after a huge financial crisis doesn’t negate any other forecast.

So what has changed this time around? We are still in a fucked economy, with a huge financial crisis on the way, and the forecast is again so blatantly dishonest, that it is a joke to pretend there is any chance they get it even close.

Which alternative forecast was more accurate? Why was it ‘nonsense’, as opposed to extremely difficult to carry out with a high chance of being wrong?

Just like with Obamacare and the 2009 projections, for some “unexplained” reason – that’s sarcasm – they have gotten things seriously wrong. It’s not like in any of these 3 we have people that want more spending setting the rules up so the CBO produces a highly distorted and unrealistic projection that looks good and allows them to do more of the same.

Why was it ‘nonsense’, as opposed to extremely difficult to carry out with a high chance of being wrong?

Something difficult means you have chance to make it happen. And I have a bigger chance of winning the Powerball (160 million to one odds) than they have of any of those projections coming true. This scenario of yuours ain’t happening. Ever. Let’s not kid ourselves: these people wouldn’t know how to fix or keep an economy if it was running red hot. They are going to spend more and cripple the economy as they tr to confiscat even more to keep the plummetng plane from slamming into the ground. So anyone pretending that these tax hikes are going to make a difference when spending is going up and revenue more likely than not going down, is talking nonsense.

Then you better forecast a colossal recession (less govt spending, and considerably less tax revenue). If you don’t you’re ignoring ‘reality’.

We are already there CM. We are going to keep having more of it, and then, as long as we do not pull the plug on government and let things reset, it will stay that way. They should have let those big banks that their buddies owned go bankrupt and not spent all that TARP or stimulus money for naught. There would have been some immediate pain, but we would have bounced back. Now we are going to stay stuck in this rut as long as they keep pretending government can fix this. And the revenue dip will go up as soon as the recovery finally begins. Besides, why not have government live within its means like we all have to?

So what has changed this time around? We are still in a fucked economy, with a huge financial crisis on the way, and the forecast is again so blatantly dishonest, that it is a joke to pretend there is any chance they get it even close.

Where and how is it “blatantly dishonest”? Which part specifically?
Where is the alternative analysis which forms the basis of you knowing better?

It’s not like in any of these 3 we have people that want more spending setting the rules up so the CBO produces a highly distorted and unrealistic projection that looks good and allows them to do more of the same

So let’s look at these new rules. What are they and when were they introduced, and what has the effect been?

They are going to spend more and cripple the economy as they tr to confiscat even more to keep the plummetng plane from slamming into the ground. So anyone pretending that these tax hikes are going to make a difference when spending is going up and revenue more likely than not going down, is talking nonsense.

Again, how does any of that provide evidence that a prior CBO forecast was “nonsense” as opposed to wrong?

We are already there CM. We are going to keep having more of it, and then, as long as we do not pull the plug on government and let things reset, it will stay that way.

I’m not sure how you could get a larger and deeper recession than by “Pulling the plug” on government.

They should have let those big banks that their buddies owned go bankrupt and not spent all that TARP or stimulus money for naught.

We’ve been through this a number of times. That the stimulus money was “for naught” is not by any means a mainstream or dominant economic opinion. It’s certainly a popular political opinion though. But trying to claim it as a ‘fact’ is just silly.

There would have been some immediate pain, but we would have bounced back.

It’s difficult to find any economists, other than obviously-partisan economists, that would agree.

Now we are going to stay stuck in this rut as long as they keep pretending government can fix this. And the revenue dip will go up as soon as the recovery finally begins. Besides, why not have government live within its means like we all have to?

I agree that the government should live within it’s means, no matter how much you keep pretending otherwise. However, government debt just isn’t the same as household debt.